If you're overwhelmed by the amount of skin-care products out there, you're not alone. How can you wade through them all when they're all claiming to be the greatest, the most natural, the most organic? Our beauty expert explains how best to care for your skin.By Mary Beth Janssen
What I'd like to tune into is a holistic approach to radiant, dewy skin--the process of conscious skin care. So let's begin at the beginning with true organic skin care. We need to simplify, simplify, simplify! Let's begin with the following delightful visualization.
Healthy skin is alive with vibrating energy. It's radiant, smooth, supple, elastic, and moist. It also has a slight flush to it from optimal blood circulation. This kind of skin shows that lymph fluid is removing toxins and boosting immunity. Stress is under control, antioxidants are preventing free radical damage, and hormones are balanced. The oil and sweat glands are bathing the skin with just the right amount of natural oil and moisture, which in turn maintains the skin's natural acid mantle. All the while, the skin is experiencing a constant state of renewal, turning over and shedding over a million skin cells an hour in a sort of healthful internal dance. Every cell in your body communicates and works harmoniously. This is synergy in motion.
BEAUTY-LICIOUS
While this wonderful balance is indeed how your skin wants to react, you can damage this balance by putting your skin in harm's way. However, you can minimize damage by examining everything you do, which is sometimes easier said than done, since many people don't even realize that their routine activities damage their skin. The perfectly natural, organic ways to create beautiful skin are to manage stress, eat healthfully, stay hydrated, get a good balance of physical activity and rest, practice sun protection, and avoid smoking. And naturally, follow a healthful skin-care regimen with pure products, where you always use only the gentlest manipulation of the skin. Rough tugging, rubbing, or abrasive handling with your fingers, hands, towels, tissues or machines can mechanically damage your skin.
While this wonderful balance is indeed how your skin wants to react, you can damage this balance by putting your skin in harm's way. However, you can minimize damage by examining everything you do, which is sometimes easier said than done, since many people don't even realize that their routine activities damage their skin. The perfectly natural, organic ways to create beautiful skin are to manage stress, eat healthfully, stay hydrated, get a good balance of physical activity and rest, practice sun protection, and avoid smoking. And naturally, follow a healthful skin-care regimen with pure products, where you always use only the gentlest manipulation of the skin. Rough tugging, rubbing, or abrasive handling with your fingers, hands, towels, tissues or machines can mechanically damage your skin.
WHY ORGANIC SKIN CARE?
When we're young, our body is programmed to maintain clear, smooth, soft skin, and we have to really ignore our skin or take it for granted to derail this program. As we age, however, our skin begins to work less efficiently, thinning out, losing elasticity, and sagging. Exposure to stress--environmental, physical, mental--only exacerbates this natural aging process. And mind you, when I talk about aging skin I don't mean 50- or 60-year-old skin. These changes can begin at a much younger age if your skin does not receive proper care.
When we're young, our body is programmed to maintain clear, smooth, soft skin, and we have to really ignore our skin or take it for granted to derail this program. As we age, however, our skin begins to work less efficiently, thinning out, losing elasticity, and sagging. Exposure to stress--environmental, physical, mental--only exacerbates this natural aging process. And mind you, when I talk about aging skin I don't mean 50- or 60-year-old skin. These changes can begin at a much younger age if your skin does not receive proper care.
Proper care does not have to mean using lots of expensive and/or complicated products. What I'm referring to is organic skin care, a logical and relatively simple approach that holistically nurtures your skin's natural ability to maintain good health. It's about both those therapies that treat our skin from the inside out and from the outside in.
Primary goals in organic skin care are to encourage the regular sloughing off and turnover of skin cells and to maintain the skin's natural acid mantle, which is a combination of sebum and perspiration that your body secretes to protect and moisturize your skin's surface. Achieving these goals can help rebuild damaged collagen and elastin (the chief protein in your skin's elastic fibers) in order to maintain skin strength, elasticity, and resiliency. There are many methods for optimizing cellular turnover. Body brushing, cleansing with a facial mitt or buff, using deeply cleansing masks, and using alpha-hydroxy acids or AHA's (natural organic fruit acids), can all help exfoliate dead surface cells and maintain efficient skin cell turnover. Your skin can get AHA's through a wide variety of treatments, from peels to moisturizing lotions. To protect your skin's natural acid mantle, which covers your entire body, use gentle acid-balanced cleansers to wash. And please avoid antibacterial or deodorant soaps, which tend to be quite harsh.
YOUR SKIN-CARE REGIMEN
When the foundation for your skin health has been laid by making the most of sunshine, fresh air, sleep, relaxation, water and food, it's time to turn to our skin-care regimen. I recommend indulging in regular facial treatments with a skin-care professional. They can set you on the proper path toward blissful, skin-type appropriate, organic skin care. Minimally, the change of seasons is a particularly good time, because your skin usually changes to adapt to climate changes. And it's delightful to put your skin in someone else's capable, healing hands.
When the foundation for your skin health has been laid by making the most of sunshine, fresh air, sleep, relaxation, water and food, it's time to turn to our skin-care regimen. I recommend indulging in regular facial treatments with a skin-care professional. They can set you on the proper path toward blissful, skin-type appropriate, organic skin care. Minimally, the change of seasons is a particularly good time, because your skin usually changes to adapt to climate changes. And it's delightful to put your skin in someone else's capable, healing hands.
Skin-care specialists are well-versed in skin-care techniques, from basic to the most advanced. Naturally, the world of the spa offers a number of progressive, specialty skin-care treatments, but following are some steps you can take on your own. You can adapt these basic steps to your skin type, and the product and application may depend on whether you're caring for your facial or body skin:
• Cleanse: Wash your skin with a gentle cleansing agent to remove dirt and oil and balance the skin--gently, please! Be extra-gentle on your face and neck. Use upward and outward strokes. Around the delicate upper-eye area, work from the inner corner out and around the lower eye area, work from the outer corner in. Masks can deeply cleanse pores and reduce their size, with some masks serving double duty as exfoliants.
• Tone: Apply some form of clarifying liquid to firm skin tissue, reduce pore size, and remove any remaining cleanser residue. Mist it on or apply with an organic cotton pad. Look for toners with organic botanicals, herbs, and essential oils. (I love my homemade rosewater!)
• Moisturize: Apply hydrating lotions, creams, butters, and oils that are humectant (draw moisture into the skin), emollient (preserve moisture already in the skin), and lubricating (lay a thin protective lipid layer on the outside of the skin). Apply to damp skin to lock in extra moisture. Don't use heavy, greasy creams. Your skin needs to breathe! Lightly pat moisturizer around your eye area with the pad of your middle or index finger.
• Exfoliate: Apply exfoliants to remove the top, dead layers of skin cells and debris to encourage better cell turnover and prevent clogged pores. But please, moderation is key. Exfoliating too often or with products that are too strong can strip away the skin's natural acid mantle, throwing your skin into an imbalanced state. Always follow product label instructions.
• Protect: Adhering to the first four techniques ultimately provides vital protection of our skin, encouraging healthy cell turnover; safeguarding the skin's natural acid mantle; and helping maintain the skin's natural strength, elasticity, and resiliency. Be certain to use high quality, non-toxic sun protection, especially during the mid-day sun (I love Badger's natural/organic, non-nano zinc oxide brand!). As healthy as sunbathing or exposure in moderation is for our health (especially in the manufacture of vitamin D), unprotected sun exposure is a prime cause of wrinkles and 90 percent of skin cancers are from sun damage.
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